Prober warns of pedophiles

Internet seminar targets predators

September 13, 2001|By Nancy Ryan, Tribune staff reporter.

New filtering software has made it easier for parents to limit their children's exposure to cyber porn, but a Lake County investigator warned Wednesday about predators who lure young people into sexually explicit discussions on the Internet.

"I'm amazed by the number of people willing to engage minors in sexually explicit discussions," Mark Pleasant, an investigator for the Children's Advocacy Center, said at a training seminar in Gurnee on school violence and the Internet.

Almost 40 pedophiles have been convicted or charged in Lake County in the last two years since law enforcement officials began cracking down on people who solicit children over the Internet, Pleasant said.

Most recently, a Lake County grand jury indicted a 39-year-old southwest suburban Oak Forest man on one count of indecent solicitation of a child in an Internet sting operation.

The teenager he allegedly arranged to meet at an undisclosed location in Lake County in August was actually an investigator who posed as a 15-year-old girl from Lake County in an Internet chat room.

No hard figures are available on how many adults pursue such discussions because police only track those cases in which pedophiles seek to meet a youth to have sex, authorities said.

"It's a problem because we still have children being exposed to that," said Pleasant, one of several speakers at the seminar sponsored by the Lake County Juvenile Justice Council and the 19th Judicial Circuit. He is also an investigator with the Lake County state's attorney's office.

Pleasant and others cited a 1999 study, which they said found that of 24 million Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17, one in five claimed to have been sexually solicited online.

Only a quarter of those told their parents and only 10 percent of the parents contacted the police, according to the study.

"I don't understand why more parents don't report it," said Gurnee Police Chief Robert Jones, adding that his department has been aware of the problem for years and has investigators trained in tracking predators on the Internet.

In addition to buying filtering software, parents can use tools from their Internet service provider that can limit a child's access to adult-oriented Web sites and chat rooms. But minors are still frequently approached by adults.

To demonstrate how quickly minors are approached in chat rooms, Pleasant logged into an Internet dating chat room, posing as a teenage girl.

Within seconds, someone wrote back asking for more information.

When Pleasant said he was a 14-year-old girl, the other chat room user responded: "too young."

"Well, that's good," Pleasant said.

After the seminar, Pleasant said he would advise parents to closely supervise their children's Internet use, possibly keeping computers in the kitchen or in another frequently used room.

"It saddens me that we have to focus on these issues. I can remember the days when spitballs were the biggest problem in schools," Lake County School Supt. Edward Gonwa said. "The message we are hearing is we must be vigilant."